New footprints arrive with scuffed shoes,
Restless eyes look round impatiently
For something to do with spare coins.
Louder yet still recalling
Lessons taught in reigning-in.
Squawking done, they don the mantle
Embroided with right and wrong
And wear it solemnly
As seasons whisper by
They recapture half forgotten wisdom.
Horse slapped down
By bikes and Brylcream
Frothy coffee, sloppy stance.
Drawn back with age though
To ties and boiler suits with time
To slippers pipes and cardigans
And dismay at long-haired suitors
For yet more restless daughters.
Having tasted idleness of morals
Get drunk on them.
Free love all the rage
And yet found with wailing bumps
That ruined her figure and prospects
Nothing in love is free.
Vainly scratching flower-strewn heads
In trying to recall- or forget
Where those silent footprints lay
Among her grandad's weed-choked life.
Giving up as being too much like hard work
Moves on airily, husband shown the door.
Mid-life bitterness hangs from dog-ends
Clasped in sullen-mouthed grimaces
At the state of the world today.
She stares down from her kitchen musings
At her own bump's latest bump.
Father unknown and not missed.
The ghost of non-negotaible hard work
Is laid to rest and smothered
With excuses and shouts of defiance
Encouraged by state departments.
Her daughter helps with the exorcism.
The next to fall is manners
Strangled in anger at birth
With petulant frustrated knowledge
That her son will not have
All the things she never deserved.
Knowing as he comes out screaming
That there is nothing to fear.
Nothing will be expected of him,
No one will notice or care.
Boldly striding out, knife in pocket
He stabs the final ghost of
Those before to death in the street.
Respect joins those etheral victims.
Gone to sleep now forever.
He cannot remember those footprints
In the garden...not interested.
He himself must come first in everything.
Crushed nation ruled by buffoons condones
His every act with spineless silence.
For they too have forgotten
The silent footprints
That were theirs to fill.
